Could You Trade Download Speed for Upload Speed With Comcast
The speeds aren't real merely they are spectacular —
Comcast offers tantalizing hint of a future with upload speeds to a higher place 35Mbps
Lab test produces 4Gbps upload speeds but actual uploads are notwithstanding 3 to 35Mbps.
Overstate / Picture of a Comcast router/modem gateway from the company's website.
Comcast today offered the latest hint of a future in which its cable customers won't be limited to 35Mbps upload speeds. Announcing a recent lab test, Comcast said its research team "deliver[ed] upstream and downstream throughputs of greater than 4Gbps" and that "future optimization" will permit "fifty-fifty greater capacity."
This was "the first-always live lab test" of a Broadcom "system-on-chip (SOC) device that will pave the way for Comcast to deliver multigigabit upload and download speeds over its hybrid-fiber coaxial (HFC) network," Comcast said. It won't require installation of more than cables because the "engineering works using the same types of connections already installed in hundreds of millions of homes worldwide," Comcast said.
Cable customers have been waiting a long time for upload speeds that aren't a tiny fraction of download speeds. Comcast's cable uploads, ranging from 3Mbps to 35Mbps, are and then depression that Comcast hides them deep within its online ordering system. While cable download speeds of upwards to 1.2Gbps are prominently displayed, Comcast doesn't tell customers what upload speeds they'll get until they enter a valid credit bill of fare number.
Comcast justified its tactic of hiding upload speeds by saying that its "website reflects the style customers employ the Internet, with downstream overwhelmingly dominating usage." Only occasionally, such equally in today's annunciation, Comcast acknowledges that customers want higher upload speeds.
"This milestone is particularly exciting because this technology is an important footstep forward toward unlocking multigigabit upload and download speeds for hundreds of millions of people worldwide, not but a select few," Comcast executive Charlie Herrin said in the proclamation.
"Total duplex" DOCSIS
Comcast does offering a residential fiber service with upload and download speeds of 2Gbps, but availability is express and the service costs $300 a month, plus installation and activation charges of upwards to $1,000 combined. The fiber service requires the installation of new wires into each home, simply the newly appear lab test delivered multi-gigabit upload and download speeds over the standard cable wires that Comcast has installed throughout its 39-state territory.
The test used a Broadcom SOC powered past the latest version of DOCSIS, the Data Over Cablevision Service Interface Specification. The Broadcom "device is expected to become the world's offset production silicon to exist developed using the DOCSIS iv.0 Total Duplex standard, which represents an evolutionary bound forrad in the ability to deliver ultra-fast speeds over HFC [hybrid fiber-coaxial] networks," Comcast said. "One of the most important breakthroughs in the DOCSIS 4.0 standard is the ability to use network spectrum more efficiently, allowing operators to dramatically increase upstream speeds without sacrificing downstream spectrum to practise and then."
Years of unfulfilled upload-speed promises
The cablevision industry has been promising symmetrical upload and download speeds over cable networks for years without always saying when such speeds volition become bachelor.
The DOCSIS 3.ane specification released in 2013 theoretically allowed 10Gbps downloads and 1Gbps upload speeds, but actual implementations never came close to those numbers. An update to DOCSIS 3.one finalized late in 2017 was supposed to bring download and upload speeds of 10Gbps, and the cable manufacture unveiled a "10G" marketing campaign in January 2019 to boast of those symmetrical 10Gbps speeds. Comcast today called its newest test "an important step forrard on the path to 10G."
The full-duplex version of DOCSIS 3.1 was updated and renamed "DOCSIS 4.0." Despite the "full duplex" name, the cable industry has lowered the estimated upstream speeds from 10Gbps to 6Gbps.
"Current DOCSIS iii.1 cable modems support capacities up to 5Gbps downstream and 1.5Gbps upstream," the cable-manufacture group CableLabs says. "DOCSIS 4.0 cable modems will back up capacities upwards to 10Gbps downstream and 6Gbps upstream."
Comcast said that a "key advantage of DOCSIS four.0 Full Duplex is that it establishes a foundation for operators to deliver multigigabit speeds over their existing networks to the connections already in hundreds of millions of homes around the world, without the need for massive digging and construction projects." Comcast called it "a powerful new tool to back up our mission of delivering the best possible continued experiences to our customers," but it didn't say when those customers will be able to purchase a hereafter "full duplex" service.
Smaller upload increase perchance on tap
Comcast in October 2020 said it achieved a "technical milestone" that delivered 1.25Gbps download and upload speeds over existing cable wires during testing at a dwelling in Jacksonville, Florida. While gigabit upload speeds over cable would exist a massive improvement, it probable isn't anywhere close to being implemented. It's as well not clear when Comcast will raise cablevision upload speeds to anything college than 35Mbps—Comcast hasn't even confirmed an increment to 50Mbps uploads, which is already offered by WOW on that company'due south gigabit-download plan.
Currently, Comcast'south 25Mbps download program comes with 3Mbps uploads; the 100Mbps and 200Mbps download plans both have 5Mbps uploads; the 400Mbps download programme has 10Mbps uploads; the 800Mbps plan has 15Mbps uploads; and the 1Gbps download programme (one.2Gbps in some areas) comes with 35Mbps uploads. By contrast, cobweb-to-the-home providers generally provide symmetrical upload and download speeds of up to 1Gbps.
Comcast did hint at college upload speeds "in the near term" using DOCSIS three.one, simply information technology didn't specify what those speeds volition be or say when they volition exist available:
Even every bit Comcast works to test and deploy Full Duplex DOCSIS to enable multigigabit upload and download speeds in the time to come, the visitor is leveraging the technologies from the October trial, along with DOCSIS 3.1 in the upstream, to increment speed and capacity in the near term.
The October 2020 examination "deliver[ed] i.25 Gig symmetrical speeds over a live, all-digital network by leveraging advances in Distributed Access Architecture, Remote PHY digital nodes, and a cloud-based virtualized cable modem termination organization platform," Comcast said. In the more recent test announced today, the sit-in occurred in a "simulated" environment instead of a home.
"Comcast technologists in Philadelphia and Denver conducted the exam past installing the Broadcom SOC in a simulated network environment to track the operation of its Full Duplex DOCSIS features—including echo cancellation and overlapping spectrum—which combine to support substantial improvements in network throughput," Comcast said.
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Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/04/comcast-touts-4gbps-cable-uploads-in-lab-test-still-limits-users-to-35mbps/